Autonomous unmanned vehicle systems have existed in research labs for decades, and are now seeing increasing use outside of these controlled environments. Systems which were considered reliable from an experimental standpoint are now viewed as quite fragile when they are subjected to harsh environmental conditions and intensive use. They were originally only operated by those who designed them; they are now being placed in the hands of less technically adept individuals. Though many industrial or military grade UVs exist which can operate in such settings, they tend to be prohibitively expensive for most users.
Additionally, these systems were originally developed in a custom or low-production volume manner, where careful attention could be paid to individual units as they are constructed. As unmanned systems begin to be mass-produced, key components will need to be easily upgradable, without requiring major system architecture changes for each improvement. At the moment, the nature of many UVs precludes this. Many fully-closed systems exist wherein upgrades can only be performed by the manufacturer. Likewise, a great number of “modular” robotics platforms and hardware are on the market, but such hardware often requires a significant amount of effort by the user to integrate; they are not “plug-and-play”.
It is therefore desirable to implement a hardware system architecture which is robust to failure, easy to use, and easily upgradeable as design improvements are made.